Me and 'AI'

 

Artificial 'Intelligence'.

Too bad there is less 'intelligence' and more mis- and dis-information being dished up by these 'services' being touted as 'make your life easier', and 'create art like a professional', and 'let me dish up a word salad of nonsense in answer to your search'.

I am *not* saying that there are no programs that are legitimate design tools.  I mean, I've been using weaving software since 1988 when I bought my first program (Fiberworks for anyone interested) at a time when a large part of the weaving community declared that using such software was 'cheating'.

But that's the difference imho - a program takes in the information the user provides.  The current 'AI' scrapes the internet for content, not understanding a thing, just cobbling together an approximation of what is happening in a craft (for example) and without thought, spits it out.

So we have recipes that make no sense.  Wild mushroom foraging books that tell people that a mushroom is safe when it is deadly, books on crafts that make no sense of the technical skills or information involved in mastering that skill.

In the meantime, billionaires spend billions developing and marketing their half baked ideas of what constitutes knowledge about, oh, let's say weaving, without understanding one iota of the actual dynamics of the craft, never mind the physics or how a textile is made from the thread up.  And stealing content from the humans who have actually created content, without compensation, may I add.  (The fact they are now whining that they can't honour copyright because it is too expensive kind of says it all, imho.)

What they are clearly saying is that they would rather spend money creating a faulty tool (Cybertruck comes to mind for some strange reason) than pay human beings to think, create, grow.  They would rather cut out the actual humans doing the skill than pay them for their time, expertise and creativity.

But a tool cuts more than one way.

As usual, everyone has to make up their own minds about whether this new 'tool' is helpful or not.

In the meantime, I'll be sitting here at my desktop with Fiberworks and I'll be drawing upon works that have been done in the past, thinking about them, tweaking them, creating something different than my resource, and using my own brain and creativity to hopefully come up with something that I can put my name on.

I will be sitting here at my desktop, writing words that will hopefully help people make sense of this craft that has been practiced since the beginning of (human) time.  I will be writing, and weaving, and encouraging others to learn.  To grow.  To experiment.  To try to understand the principles and work at 'mastering' this craft.

I encourage people to support other humans, not billionaires trying to starve out actual humans from creative pursuits.

If you want to support me, as usual here are my links:

School of Sweet Georgia

Handwoven class

 My books at blurb

My memoir at ko-fi  plus towels, lots of towels!

And if you are interested in a remote presentation...  (no 's' on the site yet, so you may be warned it isn't secure, or email me laura at laurafry dot com)